9'8" x 14'6" Agra Design Oriental Rug | Olive Green & Coral Red All-Over Floral | Made in India

This is a large hand-knotted rug in the classic Agra manner, 9'8" x 14'6" of olive green field framed by a deep coral red floral border. The pile is wool on a cotton foundation, clipped low so the drawing reads cleanly from across a room, and the whole piece is worked as one continuous all-over floral design with no central medallion. At just under 10 by 15 feet it belongs with the true 10x14 room size rugs, big enough to sit under a full seating group or a 10 seat dining table with the chairs pulled back. Condition is excellent and never used, and the rug ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is hand-knotted.

Design and Motifs

The field is built on a long arabesque vine that runs the length of the rug and throws off mirrored scrolls to either side, so the pattern repeats in symmetrical panels rather than radiating from one center. Inside each compartment sit broad serrated leaves, split palmettes, ivory lotus heads and small flowering plants set in footed urns, with narrow stems carrying single blossoms into the open ground. The center of each repeat is marked by a multi petal rosette worked in coral red with a pale outline, the most defined single motif in the field. The main border is a coral red band carrying large 8 petal rosettes in ivory and sage, linked by a leafy meandering vine and alternating with smaller cruciform flowers. Two ivory guard stripes carry a running geometric zigzag and tiny four petal flowers, and a plain olive outer band closes the rug, tying the border back to the field.

Olive Green, Coral Red and Light Brown

The field is a warm olive green with a golden, almost khaki cast where the light strikes the pile, shifting a shade or two along the length as hand-spun wool always does. Against it the coral red reads soft rather than sharp, closer to tomato and brick than to a modern fire engine red, and it carries both the main border and the outlines of the vine work in the field. Light brown and taupe fill the secondary leaves, and a good deal of ivory and cream runs through the lotus heads, border rosettes and guard stripes, which is what keeps such a dark field from going heavy. The close-up photographs also show a soft salmon pink in the smaller blossoms and a pale sage in the leaf tips, so the palette is warmer and more layered in person than a single full-room photograph suggests. It is a green rug that sits comfortably on dark oak or walnut floors and takes cream, camel and rust furnishings without a fight.

Agra Design, Woven in India

Agra names a design language before it names a place on this rug's label. The city's Mughal era workshops produced the great scrolling vine and palmette carpets that this pattern descends from, and weavers in India have carried that drawing forward ever since. This piece was made in India, and India is where most of the world's good contemporary hand-knotted work is now produced, which is why an Oriental rug of this scale and quality still comes out of the subcontinent rather than anywhere else. The weave here is even and well controlled: hand-spun wool on a cotton warp, straight selvedges, a low uniform clip, and a reverse that shows the border rosettes and guard stripes clearly enough to trace, which is the honest test of knot definition in a room size piece. The wool has a matte, slightly waxy handle that will burnish rather than shed as the rug is walked on.